


return to what's left of the pack

by gallantrejoinder



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Familial Relationships, Family, Gen, Handwaving the War of the Dawn LMAO, Queen in the North, Reunions, Siblings, Sisters, The focus is definitely on characters and relationships here, sorry folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8829046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: A Queen in the North AU, set several years after the War of the Dawn. Sansa is focused on trying to rebuild Winterfell, sharing dreams with Bran and still seeking Rickon's safe passage home, when Arya returns - seemingly from the dead. But Sansa does not know how to reconcile the woman who was once Arya with the girl that was her sister, and the path to happiness will never run smoothly for their family.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I absolutely love reunions between the Stark sisters, but I have to wonder if things would really go all that smoothly at first with so much time having passed? Hence this fic. It's a rework of one I wrote a few years ago, so if it looks familiar - that's why!

_fight, sister._  
_win silent battles with your arsenal_  
_of words and smiles and charms,_  
_with gowns and flowers and perfume._  
_a wolf will not be tamed, but,_  
_a wolf can be patient too._  
  
_hide, sister._  
_lose your heritage amongst the cities_  
_with voices and faces and magic,_  
_and knives and poisons and blood._  
_a lone wolf may just yet_  
_return to what’s left of the pack._

~

 

When her sister returns, Sansa does not embrace her.

 

In truth, she does not recognise her, scarred and tanned and muscled as Arya has become. This tall, wiry woman with lowered eyes and cropped hair means no more to Sansa than any other man or woman in the North. When the woman enters her court, Sansa knows immediately that she must be foreign, because her garb is not Northern in the least and her shoes bear signs of long travel. The gravity of what it means for her to bend the knee to Sansa does not hit her until the woman looks up, despair in her eyes, and whispers in a voice for Sansa alone –

 

“Sister, do you not know me?”

 

Sansa realises, with a peculiar lack of emotion, that the woman who kneels before her is not another one of the smallfolk, come to pay respects to a queen they had long thought dead or captured. She is not a travelling noblewoman, intending to curry favour with the fabled Queen in the North. She is Sansa’s family and her home, and everything left to her in the cold world beginning to dawn into a new summer. She represents everything Sansa has lost on her way to becoming the rightful Queen.

 

Later, Sansa will have it put out later that she held Arya and cried. That she had immediately left to go to her private rooms to talk with her sister, and to remember together the family they had both lost.

 

But now, Sansa stands, her face sculpted into careful blankness, years of necessitated repression settling into place, and she leaves her there. When Arya calls out her name, she orders her queensguard to arrest the stranger in their midst, her voice trembling, betraying the mask she has slipped on so subtly. If the world has taught Sansa anything, it is that she must take her pain and paint it white and wear it as her only armour.

 

~

 

Sansa does not leave her rooms for the rest of the day. She speaks only to ask her handmaiden and guards to spread the message that no one disturb may her. No one questions her, but she can still sense their curiosity and the gossip that will be spawned by her public order of arrest.

 

Sansa sits herself primly by the fireplace, smoothing out her skirts mechanically. She picks up her sewing and begins to sew stiches in a neat line, utterly unaware of whatever it is she was working on.

 

Arya is _dead_. Lost to the land, buried in a pauper’s grave instead of Winterfell, her rightful home. Sansa never saw any use in looking for a girl whose death meant only another unclaimed corpse in the devastating war. It doesn’t matter if she once threw snowballs at Sansa and pulled her hair. It doesn’t matter that Arya once scorned Joffrey, so Sansa scorned her, and their father had to warn Sansa to love her, to cherish her. It does not matter at all.

 

That, Sansa tells herself, is why she will not see her. Sansa cannot trust Arya, or anything she tells Sansa about where she has been. She has simply been gone for far too long and Sansa cannot know what she wants from her.

 

Sansa will not tell anyone who Arya truly is. She cannot risk trusting a woman who was lost to her as a girl.

 

~

 

 But Arya does not try to tell anyone else who she is either.

 

Sansa wonders why she hasn’t tried. Sansa had ordered her to be placed in the most recently rebuilt tower just outside of Winterfell’s boundaries. It stands over the ground where another crumbling tower once stood, the tower Bran fell from all those years ago. Sansa knows that he lives, he speaks to her in her dreams, but he is not ready to come home. He may never come home. And the gods know Rickon will never stay for long, if he ever does come back to Winterfell – he is wild in the brief dreams that they share with Bran, and the wildling woman who took him guards him jealously from the family that abandoned him, and the loyal Baratheon man who sought him out. Arya, though – Sansa never had hope for her. She never saw her in her dreams, and Bran would not speak of her.

 

Sansa finds it hard to sleep.

 

Her handmaiden tells her that she looks ill, and she quietly agrees and sends her away. She soldiers on day after day and walks outside the castle walls, making sure to greet whomever she meets. Sansa has decreed that the North will accept as many refugees as they can. Life is busier nowadays than when she had first arrived, years ago, to an empty landscape and starving scavengers. Sansa thinks she will travel when the roads are less dangerous, perhaps north, to the Wall. But for now, she continues to throw herself into planning for the completion of the restoration of Winterfell, and send raven after raven to all ends of the seven kingdoms. Still, she makes no mention of her sister’s return.

 

~

 

Sansa knows that Arya wants to see her. The guards Sansa had set to watch her tower are at their wits’ end, saying that she evades them often enough that they may as well be blind and deaf. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise Sansa that she escapes so easily. She always had a knack for leaving the rules behind. But Arya returns to the tower often, so Sansa leaves her to whatever game she is up to.

 

Deep in her heart, Sansa cannot admit that she fears Arya will hate her on sight. That Arya will despise her for being queen, for coming home first, for getting what she had always wanted as a naïve girl – queenship. Or thought she wanted. In Sansa’s head, Arya is still nine years old, driven by her every whim, full of energy and always teasing. Sansa cannot reconcile that little girl with the haunted woman who has come back to her.

 

She does not know how to make sense of who Arya was with a stranger wearing her features. Sansa has rebuilt Winterfell from her childhood, brick by brick, memory by memory. But she cannot rebuild Rickon, lost to the wilds, or even Bran, whose evasive face she has not had to come to terms with yet – how can she rebuild Arya, standing before her with a life that Sansa has not known behind her eyes?

 

~

 

It scares Sansa half to death to find Arya waiting in her bed one night.

 

She sits patiently, legs crossed, hand on a long, glinting knife attached to her belt. For a moment, Sansa makes eye contact – but her senses return and she turns immediately to call for help. Before Sansa even has the chance to draw breath, Arya has sprung at her with the knife to Sansa’s throat and a hand over her open mouth.

 

She pushes Sansa against the nearest wall and whispers –

 

“ _Quiet_.”

 

Her eyes are wide and dangerous. Sansa nods and feels the knife press closer into her neck. For several heartbeats, Sansa doesn’t dare breathe, before Arya finally steps back and lowers the knife. She doesn’t let it go, but seems unsure what to do with her hands, the knife clenched in her fist hanging at her side, useless. Her jaw works as she swallows.

 

“I won’t hurt you. I swear it, I won’t hurt you, you’re my sister, Sansa –”

 

“Where did you go?” The words have left Sansa’s mouth before she can even consider asking Arya anything important – how she got in here, how long she’s been waiting. They hang in the air and her sister stands before her, mouth open and gaping like a fish, fumbling for words.

 

Sansa breathes out after a minute of Arya’s stunned shock, and stumbles towards the fire burning in the far wall of the room. Arya starts towards her for a moment, but Sansa flinches and it must stay something inside Arya, because she stops. After a moment, she quietly follows Sansa and stands behind her as Sansa leans a hand against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut for a brief moment.

 

“I had to pretend. Please, Sansa you have to understand, I had to do it. I had to disappear, so they would think me killed, in the war. I’m sorry,” Arya says quietly.

 

Sansa feels nothing. No sorrow, no sympathy. She raises her head and she remembers: she is a queen. She remembers something Queen Cersei told her long ago, about love and weakness. She remembers the way Littlefinger always used to demand her to be several steps ahead, always.

 

Sansa turns to face her sister.

 

“I asked where you went, not why. I have hidden too, for long years. I have had to forget Sansa Stark, I have had to play the game, and go by many names. And I have had to remember Sansa Stark too, and kill her innocence and learn to be a queen, to take her rightful place. I was confused and scared and _young_.”

 

Sansa breathes out, and finds her courage in Arya’s stunned look.

 

“I have been told of my mother’s and my brother’s deaths and wept alone. I have heard of my younger brothers’ deaths at the hand of Theon Greyjoy and yet dreamt them living, months later. I watched what remained of my mother destroy all of my enemies and then, finally, let herself die. But my sister I never knew of. She was dead, they told me, but I never saw a body and I never knew where she died. I mourned her, I wept. So tell me, what have _you_ done in your time? Where have _you_ hidden? I have lived so many lies I will know if you are untrue –”

 

“Untrue? You think I journeyed all this was to be interrogated by the _Lady_ Stark?” Arya’s voice is burning.

 

“Queen.”

 

Sansa stares into Arya’s eyes. She fiddles with the knife in her hand, never looking away from Sansa, and then her face hardens to stone.

 

“Oh, of course. How could I forget? You’re a _Queen_ , your grace, not my sister anymore,” she spits. “Well aren’t you bloody merry to have achieved your dream then? I was afraid when I heard of Joffrey’s death that you might never be the fucking _queen_ you always wanted to be!”

 

Sansa sucks in a breath, but Arya continues.

 

“I suppose it never occurred to you, high up in your tower, protected from all the horrible things down below, that I had to survive too! I was alone, _your grace_ , I had no protectors and no friends – the one person I trusted left me for a cursed knighthood! You want to know what I did? I’ll tell you – I left Westeros. I never wanted to come back. I tried to get to Winterfell but they wouldn’t take me, and all the better for it as I found Braavos.”

 

“Braavos?!” Sansa’s eyes follow Arya around the room as she paces out her ranting.

 

“Yes, your grace, _Braavos_. Syrio Forel, you remember my dancing teacher? You must, you always hated him, you always made fun of him! He came from Braavos and that was where his student returned! I learnt how to kill, how to survive. I killed hundreds of men in the service of the Faceless Men, but it did me no good since I couldn’t even stop the damned _dreams_!”

 

She stops to breathe and Sansa’s heart skips a beat.

 

“The dreams?”

 

Arya looks into her eyes, recognising Sansa’s interest, but she doesn’t betray a flicker of emotion beyond her rage.

 

“Yes, the bloody dreams. I thought I might have been mad, I wanted them gone. But Nymeria, my wolf, she lives. I dream through her eyes. She travelled North with her pack and I saw the reparations being made to my old home. I didn’t believe it though, why should I? Dreams are only dreams and I was sick and tired of hope. It has abandoned me too many times.”

 

Sansa thinks she can hear her voice hitch, but she cannot be sure. Arya stops pacing and turns to face her, ceasing. Sansa cannot bear the quiet.

 

“Then why did you return?”

 

“Because I heard a rumour. It was slim hope and it wouldn’t leave. They said there was a Stark in Winterfell once again. They said a Queen ruled in the North. So I sailed west, though it meant giving up my place as one of the Faceless Men and putting my life on the line, I came back to Winterfell to find _you_. And you turned me away and tried to lock me up. And I couldn’t fucking see my stupid, stupid sister!”

 

And this time her voice has cracked and her eyes are shining, her face is red and blotchy, and for one hysterical moment Sansa remembers when people called her _Arya Horse-face_. And then she walks towards Sansa, throws her arms around her shoulders and buries her face in Sansa’s neck. Sansa nearly pushes her away. Nearly calls for her guards.

 

But she remembers. Her mask is only a mask for the public, but her sister is her sister no matter what, and she slowly raises her arms to put them around Arya’s shoulders, shorter than Sansa still even after all these years. Sansa can feel her breathing, feel how strong her once skinny arms have become.

 

Sansa cannot remember the last time she was held.

 

Arya does not cry for long, barely even lets out a sob. Sansa understands. She has learned to cry silently too, so they are well matched. When they part, Sansa grasps her hands.

 

“I haven’t cried since I was a girl,” she says, looking blank.

 

“I’ve cried often,” Sansa replies, and Arya’s face breaks into a crooked-toothed smile.

 

“Should have known. You always cried prettier than me, Septa Mordane always told me to cry without all that snot, if I had to cry. She ever teach you that?”

 

“No. She – Joffrey –” _Septa Mordane’s bloodied head next to her father’s, no, be gracious, be brave_ … “Well, did you ever learn how to use one of those great big swords?”

 

Arya can see Sansa’s distress, Sansa knows, but she doesn’t dare ask and Sansa is glad for that.

 

“Learnt how to handle a sword better than most of the knights in King’s Landing, ‘specially as what’s left of them since the sacking of the Dragon Queen are useless. What – what have you learned, your grace?”

 

“I learnt … I learnt many things, Arya. Don’t call me ‘your grace’, it sounds ridiculous coming from y– what? What is it?”

 

Her face has frozen, some twisted expression of grief upon it. “That’s the first time someone’s called me Arya since I was ten years old.”

 

“I didn’t mean - I beg your forgiveness,’ Sansa hurries to say, and she watches Arya lower her head and grip her hands tighter.

 

“No, it’s all right. I tried – I tried very hard to lose that name, that’s all.”

 

“As I tried to lose mine. Do you know then, of the time I spent as Alayne?”

 

“Al – Alayne? No, I knew hardly anything of Westeros in Braavos. All the news we received was months old, and rife with lies and falsehoods. I misliked listening to it. It made me miss home, and I was determined not to.” A tiny line appears between Arya’s eyebrows.

 

“Well, I shall have to tell you it all then. It is quite a long tale.”

 

“Worthy of a song, I’d say.”

 

She begins to smile. The movement stills as Sansa raises a hand to her cheek, feeling the edge of a scar along her jawline. The moment ends quickly, though – because Sansa’s handmaiden walks in and drops the bundle of cloth she is holding at the sight of the woman holding Sansa’s hand.

 

She goes to scream, but Arya’s face once again turns to stone and before Sansa knows it, her hands are empty and cold, and Arya has her arm clamped down over young Alys’s face and has thrown her against the wall besides the door.

 

“Arya, stop! She’s my maid! Leave her alone!” Arya waits a long moment and stares at Sansa, something unidentifiable in her eyes, until Sansa thinks she’ll faint, but finally lets Alys go.

 

“ _Lady_ _Arya_ …?” Alys is gaping between Sansa and Arya, and Sansa curses herself for using Arya’s true name. Arya’s face is panicked, but there’s no going back now.

 

Their secret will have to be told.

 

“Yes, Alys, isn’t it wonderful?” Sansa forces her face to smile and prays the gods will grant her more tears. “My sister has returned! Send word out to the queensguard, to the smallfolk, to everyone – their princess has come home.”

 

~

 

Sansa wants her to be furious. She wishes Arya would storm out of the rooms Sansa has picked for her or scream at her, but she quietly accepts the bowing and the scraping. She is not happy with it, but she is resigned. Sansa doesn’t know how to talk to her. Even at the feast she dutifully organises to celebrate the return of the lost princess Arya, where Arya sits at her side all night, Sansa cannot find the words to say how sorry she is. Arya stays all night, watchful and silent, making the barest effort to acknowledge Sansa’s queensguard, who pledge their loyalty to her in turn. Sansa and Arya both know she doesn’t need their protection, she could best all of them in a fight. The Faceless Men, after all, are known as the deadliest of assassins for a reason.

 

Sansa feels like a fool as she watches her men treat her sister the same way they treat her.

 

Arya does not complain, however much Sansa can tell she is frustrated with her new life.

Sansa was too nervous to ask her to wear dresses or walk with her amongst the people outside the castle walls; thankfully, the smallfolk and the ladies and lords have put it down to the freakish Braavosi lifestyle. They call her little sister the Returned Stark, the Wild Daughter. But Sansa is still only known as the Kindly Queen.

 

Arya lives out her days inside Winterfell. As far as Sansa knows, she never leaves. She’s never where she ought to be, that’s something that will never change. She escapes her guards as easily as she did when she was simply the prisoner in the tower. The same men, sworn to secrecy about her imprisonment, guard her now. Sansa knows they will never reveal what she did, but to be sure, Arya had sworn them to secrecy too. Arya thinks she doesn’t know about it, but Samwell, the most loyal of her queensguard, had told her nervously one night and asked if her grace had been right to do so. Sansa had responded that Arya’s orders were as her own.

 

Yet still, Sansa does not know how to talk to Arya, and Arya does not attempt to talk to Sansa. After that first night, only the barest courtesies are exchanged between the two of them, and Arya does not come to Sansa’s bedchamber again to talk.

 

Sansa sometimes catches herself wishing that Arya would. She remembers being held by her. She remembers feeling safe for the first time in a very long time.

 

But Sansa also remembers that her sister has survived on her own for years now, as Sansa has. It’s better for her to leave Arya be. Clearly, she never intended to return to being a highborn woman, much less royalty. Sansa ruined that for her, and must accept it.

 

Life goes on as it did before, with the added reminders that her sister is returned to her. When Sansa travels to the surrounding villages, smallfolk ask after her nervously, and the highborn families send gifts from afar to celebrate. The ravens flew thick and fast in the days after Alys’s discovery in Sansa’s bedchamber. Weeks later the news has still only barely reached beyond the North, and so the congratulations continue.

 

~

 

The day that her sister comes out of hiding, Sansa is nearly killed.

 

She has let her queensguard relax. Winterfell is not against her, has never truly been hostile to her presence, barring the odd veteran of the war driven mad and determined to destroy any highborn person unfortunate enough to cross their path.

 

So, today Sansa walks ahead, if only to feel free of her queensguard’s oppressiveness and to invite the people to speak freely. There are women who come to her and talk of sewing and needlework – they know now that Sansa loves to learn about dressmaking and are happy to think they’ve something in common with their Queen. Men have long come to praise her beauty, beggars and nobles alike, but Sansa prefers talking to the women, especially the mothers. She had missed being surrounded by women, talking about women’s business, during her stay in the Eyrie – even in King’s Landing, the only female company had been hostile. The gods know these days Sansa’s time is eaten away by diplomacy and planning, and countless offers of marriage which she can never accept. Time amongst women is important to her when it comes.

 

The day is cold as always, but the sun shines weakly through the clouds and so there are more people on the roads. Sansa has stopped to listen to a woman holding a wailing child - she wants to know whether Sansa will approve of her naming the child after her lost mother. The truth is that Sansa’s mother’s name will always pain her. This child will always remind her of the woman who was not her mother who had returned to her, but Sansa concedes, gratefully. A gracious queen always accepts gifts given in kindness, no matter how many nightmares they spawn.

 

Sansa turns to leave, and it is then that it happens. Her way is blocked by a body slamming into her with incredible force. She slips in a muddy puddle on the road and falls to the ground – she feels a line of pain opening on across her chest, but as she lifts her head to find her balance, the weight of the man who fell on her disappears. She hears a savage shout of rage and a cut-off scream, and regains her senses in time to see the man’s throat open, his blood spurting out into the cold air, steaming. It splashes onto Sansa as she scrambles back. She realises someone must have been holding him up from behind him by the hair, but he falls to his knees, life draining out of him in his twitching and convulsing, and finally flops face down into the mud beside her.

 

In amongst the shrieking and the splashing footsteps flicking mud into Sansa’s face, she sees her. Her eyes are flashing and darting around the street. She catches Sansa’s gaze for a moment, and there is a kind of savage fury there. It cools to calculation in an instant. She was the one who stood behind him and a tiny tuft of his dirty hair is still caught in her fist, her other hand clutching a wickedly sharp, bloodied knife. The same knife she once threatened Sansa with. She breaks the look between the two of them, and turns her attention towards the queensguard, who have arrived without Sansa’s noticing. They are dumbfounded about what to do – they cannot arrest the princess of Winterfell, unsure as they are as to whether she was trying to kill Sansa.

 

Sansa finds her voice at last, and shakily asks her men to help her up. Their attention is caught for the moment, and Arya disappears into the thick crowd that has gathered.

 

As Sansa is helped up, she feels a sudden throb of pain in her chest and gasps, nearly falling. One of her men scoops her up and carries her away as she hears others screaming at people to get away. Sansa has the sense to mumble that they shouldn’t be so rude, it’s no one’s fault, it’s nothing, she is perfectly well … But they cannot hear her as she is carried further, back under a roof. She vaguely recalls the last time someone carried her like this, _in King’s Landing, the riot . . . he saved my life, but he’s dead now. Like so many._ She can feel unconsciousness closing in, the screaming fading away like so many nightmares.

 

~

 

The wound is not deep, but it is long, and painful across her chest. Her collar bone was only just scraped by the knife. She feels exposed, sitting on a hard stool with the sleeves of a soft, fresh gown slipped off her shoulders in her bedchamber. Her bloodied and muddied dress has been whisked away for washing and mending by Alys, and Sansa sits perfectly still by the fire with the maester who is bandaging her chest. As he dresses the cut with strong-smelling creams that sting underneath their wrappings, she finds herself asking after her sister.

 

The maester hesitates. “Your grace … she has not yet returned. Men have been sent after her, but I would not be surprised if she does not return for some days.”

 

Sansa is quiet a moment, wincing as she lifts her arm for the bandage to pass under once more. “They know, they must know she didn’t hurt me. She was defending me from the dead man, she protected me.”

 

“Oh no, they don’t think she’s the one who hurt you. They have eyes, they saw her kill him,” he says, as he finishes tying off a small knot in the bandage under Sansa’s arm. “Now, be careful and do not strain the bandages. They are in an awkward position but it can’t be helped – you must stay very still for some days yet, to let the skin knit back together. That means no walks and no riding, your grace.”

 

“Yes, of course, but my sister,” Sansa says impatiently. “Why are they so untrusting of her?”

 

He helps Sansa slip her sleeves back onto her shoulders as he answers. “They are northmen, your grace. Your sister has been away for so long, to foreign places learning secrets that they can scarce imagine ... It is hard for them to reconcile this woman with the little girl that, no doubt, some of them can still remember. She frightens them.”

 

“Frightens them? I know she is clever, I know she can fight, but so can they – why fear her?” Sansa asks these questions as if she herself did not fear Arya when she first returned.

 

The maester’s knees creak as he stands and offers her his arm. She takes it, and he walks her to her bed, propped up with pillows, soft and inviting. “She loves you more fiercely than any of them, your grace. She has all the arts of an assassin, but she is a northwoman and she is loyal to you and you alone. She has made that clear enough to anyone with eyes, if your grace will pardon my saying so.”

 

Groaning quietly as she relaxes into the softness of her bed, regardless of the uncomfortable bandages, Sansa pauses before speaking again. “So ... they fear my sister because she is loyal to me?”

 

“Not quite. They fear her because she is as skilled as them, if not more. And she is loyal to you, yes – but it is more that she is not at all loyal to them. She looks down on them, she will only listen to you.”

 

“She is a princess! She should not bow to them,” Sansa argues, knowing that the moniker of princess sits ill upon Arya’s shoulders.

 

“Yes, your grace, but she is no ordinary princess. It is one thing for a Mormont woman to fight like a man, quite another for a Stark, and a royal one at that. It is not ... customary,” the master says, shrugging uncomfortably. “There are some men as might remember what happened the last time a Stark woman fought like a man, and it did not end well.”

 

“The histories would say otherwise, maester,” Sansa responds quietly, ignoring the mention of the aunt she still cannot reconcile as Jon’s true mother. “What of the Martells of Dorne? Their women inherit, and fight too. We have adopted their laws, at least for the time being, with my brother gone – why not look to their example in other regards? What of the Targaryens – Nymeria, Visenya, Rhaenys? Do you know how deeply I have broken the law in declaring myself queen? How Ro– my brother broke it in declaring himself king? _Custom_ said that I should have been treated well in King’s Landing, and I was not. My sister may not be ... ladylike, but she is their princess. Regardless of whether she can protect herself, they must protect her too. They swore to,” Sansa finishes, allowing her passions to carry her away in defence of her sister.

 

“You may do well to tell them so, your grace. And, if I may add, her too,” the master says, with a quirk of his eyebrows.

 

Sansa leans back a little further and feels a twinge across her chest. “I am tired, maester.”

 

“Of course, your grace.”

 

“Tell my queensguard that I am not to be disturbed unless my sister wishes to see me.”

 

“As you wish.”

 

This master is younger than Maester Luwin had been, but still, there is something in his manner that reminds Sansa of the man long since lost to the war.

 

When the door closes softly, Sansa closes your eyes and thinks about Arya, wishing she could see her again, to ask her – what? To ask her why she encourages the mistrust of Sansa’s queensguard? Why she follows Sansa and does not tell her? To beg her, if she loves Sansa as the maester claims, to _speak_ to her?

 

Sansa never understood her sister when they were both girls, the two of them simply too different to have much to talk about. She remembers being so frustrated that Arya wouldn’t simply _listen_ , wouldn’t just sit _still_ , wouldn’t be the little sister Sansa wanted. Sansa never hated her, but had never known how to relate to her either.

 

Still, Sansa has fond memories too. Snowball fights when they were both much younger and not so concerned with being polite, making fun of their Septa when her back was turned. Sansa used to carry Rickon around on her hip, very carefully, playing the good big sister whilst Arya threatened to set the cat on him. Their mother had been very displeased. Bran always surprised Sansa, jumping out from archways and in through windows. She would chase him away and Arya would join in, not out of loyalty to her, but simply because she loved to run.

 

Before long, the memories have brought on tears, but Sansa has no time to let herself cry now. She is a queen, just like she always thought she had wanted. And her sister is as alien to her as ever, even when she is all that Sansa has left outside the world of dreams.

 

~

 

She returns within the week, and Sansa cannot hide her surprise when she nonchalantly strides across the room to greet Sansa as she returns to her bedchamber alone one afternoon. Arya’s face is clear of lines or worry and she smiles when she sees Sansa enter.

 

“Sister,” she says in greeting, and it is almost too much to bear. “I hope you will forgive me. I was waylaid a while after that unfortunate incident on the road the other day.”

 

Sansa remains silent in the doorway, closing the door behind her, confused. This is not the Arya who returned to her mere weeks ago, and the gods know it is not the Arya of her childhood either.

 

“But we will say no more about it, I suppose?” Arya says, with a horrible smile upon her face.

 

“Say no mo– _Arya_. What is wrong with you?” Sansa cannot help but cry out.

 

Arya flinches, and her smile fades. “I thought you would be pleased.”

 

“Pleased? I – you – you’ve been missing for days! You haven’t smiled once since you arrived, and now you come to me and you laugh and tell me there’s _nothing to worry about_ , after killing a man for me?!” Sansa leans back against the door for strength, the force of her voice causing her chest to twinge painfully.

 

Arya pauses, looks down at her feet. When she raises her face again that awful smile is back in its place. “Like I said, there’s nothing to worry about. I am well. You are well too, I can see you’ve been treated for your wound,” she says, gesturing to where the bandages poke out of Sansa’s dress. “What’s the matter?”

 

Sansa sputters for a moment, and the smile does not leave Arya’s face. “You! You are – why are you not angry at me? You speak not a word to me for weeks, I know you hate the way the men treat you, I know you sneak out at every opportunity and then you slit a man’s throat and disappear and now you are here and – would you stop _smiling_!”

 

To Sansa’s simultaneous relief and worry, she does. Sansa flops down ungracefully in the nearest chair and feels for all the world as if she is eleven years old again. Arya has that effect on her.

 

With an air of preternatural quietness, Arya moves to sit on the floor before Sansa’s chair. She opens her mouth to speak, but cannot seem to force the words out, and her fists are clenched and shaking. She threads her fingers between each other, trying to still them, but it is no use.

 

Sansa chooses her next words carefully. “Please, Arya. Just – explain, please.”

 

She looks down at her clasped hands, and it vaguely reminds Sansa of herself in court – well, the court of King’s Landing, in any case. Finally, she looks up, and her face is free of any emotion at all.

 

“When I was with the Faceless Men, in Braavos, they taught me . . . control.”

 

Blinking away tears that threaten – a queen does not cry in front of anyone – Sansa sits up straighter to listen to her, and she tenses a moment before forcing herself to relax.

 

“You cannot bloody imagine – well, maybe you can, with all the stupid courtly manners you learn, but you don’t know what _they_ are like. I was so angry. I came there to run as far away from Westeros as I could, and I stayed because I thought I was safe. I thought they would teach me how to kill people. But they – they take away everything. They take your grudges and fury and they kill them instead, and then they take your name. Your face.”

 

There are many silent moments before she goes on.

 

“When I first arrived, they taught me how to control my face. Every morning I would practice stilling it and moving it, until the only emotions I showed were the ones I wanted to show. A smile should only come when you call it, they said. And I got good at it, after a time. Even though I – they knew I was lying when I said I was no one. They knew I was still me.”

 

She looks up at Sansa, a sort of desperation in her eyes as she continues. “I tried so hard to forget. But I couldn’t, I kept a sword that our brother made for me. Jon, he gave it to me before we left for King’s Landing, before – everything. They knew. They knew every time I lied, but they didn’t try to stop me, not until I – until I told them I had to find you.”

 

“How did you find out that I had come home?” Sansa cannot stop herself from interrupting.

 

Arya shrugs. “Westerosi ships bring Westerosi gossip, I told you. There was a merchant ship, and I ran into a northman by chance. He said there was a Stark in Winterfell, a woman.” She snorts. “He seemed more concerned that such a woman could not command an army. But you have done much more than that.”

 

“I have done precious little to gain the respect of many men, according to my council.” Sansa feels the bite in knowing that there are those that still question whether her leadership is necessary at all.

 

Arya sighs. “Yes, you have. You have given them a chance to rebuild. Plenty of kings would have told them to go to war again, and the gods know such kings would never have been loved like you are now.”

 

“They loved Robb.”

 

Arya looks down and answers quietly. “They loved Robb when their children lived, when it was summer. Winter has come now and the commons have greater concerns than rulers who won’t provide for them – or at least let them provide for themselves.”

 

“And how do you know what the commons want?” Sansa asks, quietly pressing a hand to her chest where it pains her.

 

“I’ve lived as one for ten odd years, your grace.” Her words sting with their ice. “I know what it is to pray for your next meal.”

 

Sansa sits back again from where she has begun to lean forward, relaxing into the chair. “Tell me about the Faceless Men. You promised me an explanation for everything. I still do not understand how you left them.”

 

“When I told them I wanted to find you, I sensed they were . . . disappointed in me. They did not exactly force me to stay but they – encouraged me to delay leaving. They tried to make me forget you. They succeeded once already in erasing Arya Stark, but it is one thing to kill the anger of a child, quite another to destroy the last remaining hope of a woman.” The ghost of a smile passes over her face. “A girl says nothing. A girl keeps her mouth shut . . . And so I escaped them. One night when a Westerosi ship left Ragman’s Harbour, and I was gone. I can never return to them.”

 

“So you came home. And I – I behaved terribly, I am sorry.” Sansa closes her eyes briefly at the memory of her panic and anxiety when she locked Arya up.

 

“No, I should have guessed, having your dead sister return to you would throw anyone into madness. Especially my delicate sister.” She attempts to smile, but it’s not truly happy.

 

“Then you hated me for it.”

 

“No, but I – I will not deny I hated becoming a princess in a matter of days. I hated that you thought I was going to hurt you – that you had every reason to think someone would send me to hurt you. And I hate being treated like a defenceless child now by your damned queensguard.”

 

“I know. I am sorry for it.”

 

“Then make me something other than a _princess_.” She sits up in earnestness, and Sansa knows that she needs action beyond stalking the inner castle all day and night. Sansa could never force Arya to marry, even if she wanted to. But Sansa knows what it is to be sold for power. She would never wish that on her little sister.

 

“I had thought that – maybe you could lead my army. Not to any battles, of course, not for some time. It is still winter yet, and there are far more pressing matters to be focusing on. Nevertheless, I cannot leave the North without defence.” The maester had given Sansa much to think about, but she had already been considering how best to use Arya’s talents – and, privately, to make her happy.

 

“A – you wish to make me captain of your army?” Arya is clearly shocked by her proposal, leaning forward in disbelief.

 

“Why not? You of all people are skilled at, well,” Sansa cannot phrase it delicately – “Killing. You have received training that makes you unique. You would not be without help, of course, but our few men could use your ... originality. And who better for them to look up to than a Stark?”

 

“They will never follow a woman,” Arya snorts disdainfully.

 

“They already do. And besides, the Mormonts would not hesitate to make their displeasure at any dissidence unknown,” Sansa adds, with a teasing smile.

 

Arya laughs, sounding truly happy for the first time since she snuck into Sansa’s room after her return.

 

“Now, that is a real smile Arya.” Sansa smiles back at her, but Arya crosses her legs and leans back on her hands, throwing her head back and closing her eyes. “Please. At least consider it.”

 

Bringing up her head and cracking an eyelid, she mutters “All right.”

 

“Thank you.” For a few minutes, the two of them do not speak, until she scoots closer to the edge of Sansa’s skirt draping on the stone floor.

 

“Sansa?” She says in a small voice, looking at her feet.

 

“Yes?”

 

“I did not mean to frighten you. I am sorry I cannot be – cannot be the little sister you always wanted when we were small.”

 

Sansa’s heart feels like it is breaking all over again.

 

“We were children, Arya. I wasn’t always a good sister to you either. We have both grown up now, haven’t we?”

 

“We were not children for very long in the first place,” she says quietly.

 

“No,” Sansa responds, staring at the floor. “I suppose we were not.”

 

They sit in silence, killer and queen, until the afternoon melts into evening.

 

~

 

It only occurs to Sansa to ask why Bran never spoke to her days later. He had told her, months upon months ago, he could not feel Arya, though her wolf lived with her own pack, still surviving even as the war raged all around. Bran has not visited Sansa in her dreams for weeks, but that is no surprise. He does not sense time slipping by in the way of men anymore. Bran is no longer quite a man, nor is he the boy he was. But her little brother is still her little brother. No matter what happens to his body (and the gods know where it is,) his mind always returns to Sansa, to Rickon.

 

 _But then, why not his other sister, too?_   Distance is no barrier to him anymore, his strength has grown beyond the boarders of Westeros, and Braavos is not so far away after all. Until he finds Sansa again, though, she must ask Arya yourself.

 

The opportunity arises only days later, before Sansa can yet even begin to consider making the announcement about Arya’s leadership of the North’s struggling army. She waits for Sansa each night in her bedchamber again, and Sansa smiles when she sees that she is here by the fire again. Sansa dismisses Alys with that same smile, and turns to greet her.

 

“Good evening, sister.”

 

Arya nods at her and shifts closer to the fire. “You have been busy today.”

 

“Yes, there have been those insisting on the rebuilding of the glass gardens. They don’t seem to realise that to procure glass in these times is akin to procuring rare amethysts from Asshai. Trade is difficult with the Essoi. They do not trust the dragon queen for her actions in Slaver’s Bay.”

 

Arya hums. “And you? Do you trust her?”

 

Sansa pauses. “I think … I trust her to honour our alliance. I trust her to use her dragons to subdue the rebels who would wish both of us dead. We have ... strangely, a lot in common.”

 

“She is unpredictable,” Arya insists. “What of Stannis? She has not yet dealt with him, wherever he hides, and the gods know what she could do when she would murder a man who dared to claim to be her nephew. And there are many tales about what happened to her brother. In Braavos, they said the dragon queen murdered him to take his place. Her own brother.”

 

Sansa slowly washes clean her hands in the basin Alys has left, full of warm water with a few scant drops of scented oil. Everything is difficult to afford now, even for a queen. “Yes, well. She has been kind, at least to some ... But anyhow. I have been meaning to ask you something.” Drying her hands, Sansa retrieves her hairbrush and walks closer to the fire. The hard, wooden chair somehow still manages to soothe her aching feet. She wordlessly offers Arya the brush, as Arya has taken to brushing Sansa’s hair out each night to allow Sansa’s chest to heal. Arya stands and walks behind her, reaching up to pull out the braids on top of Sansa’s head.

 

“Out with it, then.”

 

“It is not – Arya, you do not have to answer anything you don’t wish to. But it is nothing untoward.”

 

Arya pauses in her actions, not relaxing, but she makes a quiet noise of affirmation.

 

“You said you dreamed through Nymeria’s eyes,” Sansa begins, cautiously.

 

“I did,” she replies, guardedly.

 

“Then how – did our brother never see you?”

 

“Our – all of our brothers are dead, Sansa.” She stops pulling at Sansa’s hair to walk around and face her. There is confusion on her face. “Dead men cannot talk back.”

 

Sansa’s heart feels as if it has frozen over. _How could she not know?_ Taking a deep breath, she reaches out to touch Arya’s hands, brushing her fingers over her knuckles. Arya flinches as always at unexpected touch, but does not move away.

 

“No, Arya – they live. Rickon is alive, he will come home one day. I sent for him when Stannis sent word that his Hand had him at the wall, many months ago. And Bran, too, though he – I fear he will never return to us as he was. But he lives, somehow, beyond the wall. He speaks to me in my dreams.”

 

Arya’s body becomes preternaturally still as she breathes quick, shallow breaths, before she speaks.

 

“They – _why_ ... I never dreamed of him –” Her hand becomes a fist underneath Sansa’s, strong as iron.

 

“I do not know, Arya, he – perhaps he did not know where to look.”

 

“ _Why did you not tell me?_ ”

 

“I thought you knew. I am sorry.” Sansa is not sure what to do; Arya’s breathing has not slowed and she squeezes her eyes shut. But she is not trying to move away, and as Sansa makes a motion with her hand to wrap her arms around her, she suddenly grasps it and looks into Sansa’s eyes with desperation.

 

“Rickon, then, he’s coming home, but – Bran. You said he was not ... that he was different.”

 

Swallowing, Sansa nods. “It is difficult to explain. When he fell … he told me he had dreams. He dreamed through Summer, just like you and Nymeria. But it did not end there. He said there was a raven who spoke to him, a messenger of the Old Gods. When Theon Greyjoy sacked Winterfell, Bran escaped with Rickon, but they were separated. Rickon went to Skagos with a wildling woman named Osha, and Bran went north with one our father’s loyal houses, the Reed children. They are Crannogmen, they know the North well. They escaped beyond the Wall. He ... I do not exactly know how, he does not like to speak of it … But he somehow became trapped in the Weirwoods. He cannot feel his body anymore; only Summer’s, sometimes. But he can still speak to Rickon and I, in our dreams, though we cannot speak to each other – only him.”

 

“Did he ever ask to speak of me?” Arya’s voice comes out in a strained whisper.

 

“I asked him. If he’d ever seen you when his mind was flying over oceans, or if you were … Well, he said that you were hidden from him. I thought that meant you were gone from us, forever. And then when you came back, I thought he had lied to me, and I have not seen him in weeks, so I couldn’t ask. But ... I suppose he must not have been able to find you when you were a Faceless Man. Their magic ... He really must not have known.”

 

She laughs scornfully, and Sansa is filled with terror at the sound.

 

“No, truly I – please Arya, please, please, do not leave.”

 

She seems to awaken from the cold rage that had her in its grip. “Leave?”

 

Sansa cannot look her in the eye.

 

“I swore I wouldn’t run from you again,” she says, louder this time.

 

“I know,” Sansa whispers, clutching tight at Arya’s hands, still in her grip. “It’s funny. Rickon is still a child, you know? It feels as if an age has passed since I saw him, but he is still a child, and he won’t know me when he sees me.” Arya slips down onto the floor in front of her, holding on. “And Bran. I will never see him again as he was.” Staring at their intertwined hands, Sansa continues. “But you remember everything. I thought I’d lost one of the only people left who would remember and know what it was like. Before they burned this place.”

 

“I am sorry, Sansa.”

 

“No, do not be. I should not have assumed you knew anything. If he had told me he could not find you, why would he lie?” Sansa goes to stand, and Arya follows.

 

She moves to put her arms around Sansa’s waist, resting her head on your shoulders. “Sansa?” Her voice is soft.

 

“Yes?”

 

“I want to speak to him. When you see him ... Tell him I have come home.”

 

 _Home_. “I will.” _We are all coming home._

~

 

It does not happen until Arya shares Sansa’s bed once more, like they did as children.

 

The bed sharing happens much by accident, the result of a long night spent talking together about how best to announce that Arya will lead Sansa’s army. Arya has slowly begun to understand the necessity of diplomacy in situations such as these, after weeks of discussion and being brought slowly up to date about which families have allied themselves to Sansa these many years.

 

This night, the fire has begun to die down and Arya shows no signs of leaving, cross-legged on the stone floor where she prefers to sit while Sansa sews. Finally, Sansa asks the question that burns in her chest.

 

“Arya, do you want to stay here tonight?”

 

“Here?” Arya looks up in bemusement.

 

“To share the bed. Like when we were children,” Sansa presses.

 

When Arya continues to look uncertain, she prods at her with a toe. “You used to kick, you know. But I am willing to overlook that for tonight,” she says, in a dignified tone of voice.

 

One of Arya’s rare true smiles appears. “How gracious. I will overlook your snoring in gratitude,” she says, and Sansa giggles like a child, finishing the next row of stitches quickly.

 

When the two of them are finally prepared for bed a little later, with the low fire darkening the room into shadows, they climb into bed carefully. They do not jostle one another or tease, but lie side by side in the warmth of the covers and wait for sleep.

 

When sleep comes, it is confusion itself at first as Sansa’s dreams take twists and turns she cannot follow.

 

But then Bran appears, a presence in her heart she senses instantly.

 

 _Brother_ , she says, floating in the ether of the place between worlds that Bran has drawn her into. _Our sister has come home_.

 

 _I did not know she lived until now_ , he responds. And though he does not speak in words that can be heard by men’s ears, Sansa feels the sorrow in his tone.

 

A third presence makes itself known, a new one that Sansa does not recognise at first.

 

 _Sansa_?

 

 _I am here._ Sansa calls back. She recognises that voice. _Our brother has found you at last_ , Sansa says, reaching out to Arya.

 

The wave of grief, and joy, and terror at her words washes over Sansa and Bran alike with crushing magnitude.

 

 _Bran. Bran_. Arya cries out, unable to help herself.

 

 _I did not know. I did not know you lived_ , he conveys, across great distances that Sansa cannot fathom.

 

 _I believe you_ , Arya says back, the pain of being unable to hold him evident because Sansa can feel it too.

 

 _The heart tree. I live in the heart tree_. Bran flashes the scent of the tree, the sight of its red leaves before them.

 

A fourth presence joins them. Rickon.

 

 _Siblings_ , is all the impression he gives, something content in the effect of his presence. Sansa’s heart swells to know that after everything, there is a part of him that knows her.

 

They float together in the place between worlds, the place that Bran brings them to mourn what they have lost, and weep for what they still have together here. Sansa’s heart beats in time with her siblings’, and she settles into her bones knowing that when she wakes, her sister will still be there.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem at the beginning is my own. Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> [My Tumblr.](https://gallantrejoinder.tumblr.com/)


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